


No Running

by ASignificantWhisper



Series: No Running [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Bipolar Disorder, Fluff, M/M, Panic Attacks, references to past traumas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 03:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7298590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASignificantWhisper/pseuds/ASignificantWhisper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian goes into a catatonic state, and all he wants is Mickey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Running

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this in the height of one of my own mixed episodes (I have my bipolar l, for those who didn't know). I channeled into Ian, I guess. It's different than what I usually do as it's my freeform, kinda jumbled thoughts. I just let go with this one. I hope it makes sense? I worked hard on it. I'm tired, so I might've missed a couple of things during the editing process. If I did, my bad. :/ It's long and I hope it's good, and yeah. Leave comments and kudos if you like, yeah? 
> 
> Find me over at my Tumblr (which I still need to learn how to link) wroteclassicaly.tumblr.com

_Running_ , feet hitting the cement on heavy boots, the rubber sole not near enough to guard against the fleeting sharp pain. This flooring, similar, shiny bright wood. It's not familiar to him. Not peeling linoleum, warped wood. It's too polished. It's not.... not quite right. It's a discomforting crackle to his bare feet. He wiggles his toes, his legs whipped like a soft, over-shaken cream in a machine, being stirred over and over and over again, yet not ever solid enough. Not like the orignal first. The limbs are weak, tingling with blood flow temporarily kinked, their tucked position under his body the instigator.

He's not the one running, or is he? _No,_ he's here, right here. _Fuck_ , he wishes he can have the embellished strength that he has when everything is a simple hum inside him, the pain on the back burner that rests on his chef stove sized fucked up brain - to will the weights crushing him down, the black waters rotting the wood out, threatening to carve the floor he sits on - open, dangling him over an endlesslely dark pit below - away, so he can concentrate on moving his body into a steady jog. It's routine for him, it's a constant, even a spontaneous activity to run. His therapist agreed to call it his meditative activity in place of his opportunity to have a yoga class, a kickboxing class, even a fucking pottery class in the rec center his gym is in. Everyone on his ambulance crew has a membership, so obviously he took the discounted deal the moment it was presented. But all that, it wasn't his thing. He didn't need to dance (he'd done enough of that cringeworthy, sourly acidic, leave- your- mouth- bitter- tasting shit) to last him a lifetime.

This place, this too hollow box of an apartment isn't tapping him into serenity either. A studio loft is his current camp out. Even the description pisses him off. It's not good. None of this is. Not big enough in ways he needs, not what he's used to. Walls are closing in, closing fast. He's trembling, his body seeking out something secure to hold onto, to wrap around and know what it is in his arms, chaining him to reality so his mind can't kick him back into the quicksand filled gutter. It's like it's always there, waiting, simmering, bubbling. He needs to scream, holler until every piece puzzles back into a sensible click. The click his heart can taste, can wrap around and remember. There in his mind, it filters around in a dizzying array, tumbles out in welcomed extremities.

_Blue eyes_. _Crackled footing_. A man, his man running. Winded footfalls weren't in his imagination, they weren't his own. They were Mickey's. He's remembering. He can practically taste the burn that Mickey had felt in his lungs. That urgency to make sure he could come to him, to make sure everything was in its rightful place, to make sure that it was okay to be where he was - to be with Ian. To satisfy Ian in anyway that he could, that he did. To protect him. To solidify that everything was still normal - even if Ian wasn't. And when Mickey stumbled in front of the chain link fence, open, as raw as Ian felt on the inside, he chokes on his own breath at how it felt to see that. Why? Because he was chalked full of it once upon a time.

Back when Monica broke her way through their home in the Southside years ago when Ian was sixteen, trying to tear their family apart by taking his little brother, crashing over every family member, crushing even Frank of all fucking people - he was overwhelmed with his critical yearning to be near Mickey, to be connected in what kept him grounded when everything else was spraying its negative hissing. It didn't matter if Mickey couldn't bring him into his arms right on that front door step. It was okay that Mickey didn't take him to his room, let Ian move inside him, see his face to know that what they had was real and not something Ian had dreamed about, made up, or jacked off to.

Mickey not brushing him off, having those blue eyes on him, Ian felt secure enough to stay and listen, even if Mickey would've told him to fuck off with the emotional girly shit. Mickey had become Ian's hankering hope to things good and sturdy, despite their rocky start, the dangers that were lurking to unfurl into an explosion. Mickey had stunned him, obliterated his expectations apart by agreeing to be there for him. He surpassed every want, every bar that Ian held when it all came down to it, and then after Ian's diagnosis.....It scared him, it fucking terrified him that he didn't recognize anything anymore. Mickey had become attune to being someone Ian always wished for back at the Kash N Grab days.

Yet, it was everything, but what made sense. If Mickey changed then that meant Ian was off, edges scraped away like scraps to a scalpel, much like Ian wants to do to clear his brain of this fucking disease. It didn't, not at all. That person had always been inside Mickey. Good, unconditional, but afraid. At least, that's what Ian thinks. Mickey was, is Mickey. He just adapted, he let the walls down for Ian to wreck the remaining cracks, he put up with Ian's shit and he loved Ian more than he deserved. Proving multiple times that Ian's wants and needs came before his own, that despite how nasty, dramatic and manipulative Ian remembers himself being, Mickey continued on, able-bodied. Everything young and stupid Ian had hoped for caused him to throttle Mickey's safety, his feelings, his situation aside. Ian pushed with feet on hard gravel to get there to that place with Mickey, unrealizing how many mistakes he had never been able to own up to.

An inevitable thing that the more he propelled against Mickey, that his brain was also crumbling to malfunction. Safe things unraveling. Mickey wasn't to blame, he never will be. Their relationship gave Ian pieces to himself he hadn't been aware to loosing. It just was, and they just were.

It hurt too much to think that he could truly become a modernized version of Monica and leave Mickey a wreck. It angered Ian, misplaced his trust, his agressive drive. He'd launched it all at his partner without even thinking twice what it could do to him. The fog will sometimes clear enough for Ian to inject himself with the past, things he'd missed, taken for granted. He had been so busy trying to mold Mickey to fit his own needs that he'd completely invaded Mickey and his comfort zones, what he was used to. _Crackled footing_. He provoked the fucking anguish that hasn't let his insides go since he nodded to Mickey as confirmation to ending their years together. Would he ever? Ian has long since self-informed there's some events that therapeutic inflictions won't fix.

He's to blame. For fucking Mickey over every single time. For running away like a bitch, making Mickey chase. Charging in a stampede so that Mickey had to publicly out himself, anyone able to hurt him. Scurrying away from Terry after he and Mickey were caught. Mickey bloodied and battered from defending him, but he ran. Yeah, he was scared, but he should've adapted, he should've always risen to shit like Mickey had for him. Their upbringings were different. Southside normalcy, sure, but Frank was too lazily mellow to be anything as homicidal as Terry Milkovich. Ian had caged Mickey, ignoring how things had effected him. Then he abandoned Mickey, checked the fuck out. He laughed at Mickey, trashed Mickey's name with his new boyfriend, with his family. Mocked Mickey literally carving into his own skin with a mark that branded Ian close to his heartbeat, that had stole Ian's breath once it settled in how much significance and weight the action truly carried.

Ian left the man who gave his life for him to be okay, where he was with familiar things - to rot in someplace Mickey always said he'd end up, but Ian tried to convince him otherwise. His mouth never opened, his hand never picked that prison phone back up. Ian became all he was screaming at himself to stop warping into, like multiple, laughing faces. He was choking, under water, plucking at the bubbles of air coming from his water rushed lungs that had escaped to the surface, taunting - trying to say he never meant any of it. He does this a lot with the mist lifting. Ian's foundation crumbles. His new life? It's not comfortable, it's not familiar. It doesn't harbor the safety he let slip through his fingers. The one constant that never changed how he felt about Ian. The one person he lacerated through with a biting tongue, is gone.

_Mickey._

Fucked it to ashes. Trampled it to dust. Mickey had been there, but Ian was so consumed in that thick veil that he didn't see. He saw himself playing hero, protecting Mickey, not chaining him down to some psycho 2.0 version of misery, of crazy shit. He thought he was giving his act of love, or maybe nothing at all, because that's what he felt. Nothing, everything. All of it down to some dull grieving idea that he was doing the right thing by letting his soulmate go. In his quest to reach Mickey through the watery grave his mind had put him in, he'd drowned the man. The right thing had been the wrong thing. The medication let his nose poke the surface, but he couldn't really breathe in the air supply.

So Ian played pretend. He robotically lived life as if Mickey was meant to be shunned from it.

Night came in a thrash to unsnap the illusion, uncoiling Ian from himself and spitting him out of the water, right as he looked into that store mirror and saw the distorted features reflecting back. Dawn crept like cobwebs all across his skull, letting Ian feel himself briefly over the way his brain now worked. He failed, he was drifting. Playing make believe wasn't good enough anymore. What had he done? One thing after another carried out to sea. Into a water he wanted to drown in, because he desired to be with the things he lost, the things he knew. He became rigid with disconnect.

The bridge, the night air, the crash had halted his free fall redemption plan. Smoke wormed through his lungs, convincing him to play pretend like he was pathetic for letting in emotion before. If he let it in, he'd scorch to a heap of bones. Then his fucked up brain could be rejected as a scientific donation. Or maybe Lip would be so drunk that he'd request to experiment on it, see the ticks distingushed between brother and mother.

If he hadn't let the facade reign him in again, making him forget who he really was, letting him fake a happy home with someone other than Mickey. Letting himself thrum in avoidance over Yevgeny, and Mickey in that prison, let this new guy lie to him about having something that could fatally weed out Ian's existence if they went unprotected - things wouldn't be so vacant. Like a mall abandoned, graffati with broken glass and birds squatting over the broken shards where light teased from above. If Ian could reach to tower that light, hold onto it, let himself back in, stop making a mockery with falsehood, trying to be someone he wasn't.

He wants to move a hand to shake himself, hose off the crystal ball advancing with these memories, these bucking, noisy thoughts. They remind him of piano keys. Like that one time he had been drug to the thrift music shop downtown to watch Frank pawn a guitar one of Fiona's old boyfriend's had left at their house. Ian stayed mum in the back, his fingers stroking each ivory key on the old piano, bouncing his index back and forth across the keys to make different sounds. _Higher. Lower._

_High highs and low lows. Over and over and over again._

_Fuck_. This floor is too damp beneath his body. _Get up_. Can he talk? _No_ , all he sees is those lips. Someone is saying something? Why are they so swarmed? It's like a tape that is ejected from a cassette player. Languid. Ian swats at the hand that attempts to come near him. The fingers are too soft to be calloused with hard work, with the capability to hold the strings that keep Ian together. There's no vulgar inked letters on these knuckles. It's a grain of salt to a wound. Ian recoils, slapping it.

"Don't you fucking touch me!"

The eyes are alarmed, bulked with an irritating sadness. _No_ , Ian doesn't owe him anything. He's angry he let this impersonation in. He wasn't Mickey. He isn't Mickey. He'll never be Mickey.

_Mickey. Where is he?_ He doesn't think of Ian. _Maybe he's got someone? Someone better like he should, like he was always able to have. He's so good and he doesn't even know it._

"I need him. Get me him." It's a voice, his voice. He can speak.

His boyfriend is on bent knees, waving an orange pill bottle into his face, criticizing, saying something, trying to talk. His hands are full of Ian's medicine. It's not like Mickey when he talks with his hands.

"Fake, you're fake and this is all my fault," Ian rasps, fists tightening at his sides. His fingers howl to tear something apart. He's falling under. The floor is open. This isn't where he is supposed to be. It all looks so wrong. He can't smell cigarette smoke, anything that is Mickey.

_Mickey._

Mantra, vowels, every letter he wanted to write to Mickey in prison, but never did that started with Mickey. _Mick._

He's Gallagher, he's Ian. Mickey loved him. That voicemail, he still has it. Shyly nestled in his phone, under him. But he can't lift, he can't get to it. Mickey's voice. He's slipping away. He's gone. Bruised and broken. Tossed out at sea with sharp teeth only the jaws of life posses.

"Can't."

And he's done for. Blue evaporates into the darkness and he's rolled into a tarp that traps him, slaps him, prods at everything in his body. He can hear his thoughts bounce sharply off each plastic hold. He screams, outloud, judging by the way the imposter backs off, jamming something into a phone.

_Crackled footing_. Mickey stops at the fence, but he's bright in the orange attire, he's melting away, those inked fingers, pointing, telling Ian he's a mistake. Mickey moves back on those heavy boots, rewinding, body fading further from Ian. Changing it all. Wiping the slate he and Ian established. Each passage is paved over, blocked off. Ian can move again. Something hurts, springing a drawn pain across his knee caps. His knees collide, smearing across the floor. He's slapping the texture, clawing. The stranger tries to help him, onslaught. Ian wiggles back against what he can feel, uncompromising against his back. He needs the cool, something to hold onto like the last air he shared with Mickey. _Fall, winter_?

_Mickey_.

**~*~**

Fiona slaps the elastic hair tie against her wrist, the metal piece digging into the bone with each violation. Lip threads their fingers together, his eyes encouraging her to stop, letting her know it's alright to lean on him. She can attest to it, but it's fact that another Gallagher loosing their shit won't help anyone. This is about their brother right now. Taking what her next to eldest sibling offers, she goes slack a little. She'd been helping Debbie with the baby's colic, finally watching them fall asleep. Liam's nightlight was turned on, him being tucked in by Ninja Turtle sheets. Fiona was moving back downstairs to where Carl and Lip were watching a movie on the couch when she got the call. That number Ian had made them all program into their phone of his upscale fireman. Fiona never really had an opinion. He was okay looking, he was good to her brother, whatever then. She answered it.

The guy was frantic, fucked into a panic that exhausted Fiona just to listen to. He mentions Ian's name and that's all it takes for her, Lip, and Carl to pole vault into action. Debbie had woken, agreed to watch the kids. Doing 85 in a 45 zone, all with criminal records, Fiona and her brothers made it unscathed to Caleb's place in minutes flat. They maneuvered around, all stricken into silence. Ian was curled against the cabinet, rocking, his eyes red from crying, his lips quivering to keep up with his quaking body.

"He keeps saying shit I don't understand. Won't tell me if he missed his pills or whatever. Just says him, bring me him, want him, get me him," Caleb snaps.

Lip raises a brow, clearly in no mood. It's Fiona who has to squeeze his hand tighter in hers this time.

"Mickey mania," Carl interjects behind them, his voice deep. Fiona still isn't used him being this grown up. She slaps a hand over the back of his head.

"Not fucking funny."

"I'm not trying to be, fuck," Carl pleads, thumbing at his cheekbone, a sure way to keep his emotions at bay. "think about it, okay?"

"We don't know that-" Fiona starts, a shriek splattering over her words before she can finish them off.

"Mickey!"

All four heads turn to see the burly redhead leaping towards his siblings. He reaches Lip, Fiona, grabbing both forearms of their entwined hands, gripping the skin to a ghostly white. His green eyes are intense, manically fearful. His freckled cheeks are pink, dried with chafing tears, his lashes matted together in wet clumps, unruly snot and saliva gathered on his mouth and his nose. His voice is so crucial, so passionate that Fiona blinks twice to make sure she doesn't miss what he says.

Ian's voice unfolds, "Mickey."

**~*~**

"Okay, alright. I've got you. We're good, sweetface. Lip, open the door for him. Carl, shotgun is yours." Fiona directs, cradling a bundled Ian to her side.

Ian's face is blank, his eyes slick with tears that are the one and only indications to his semi lucid state. Lip helps them into the back seat, lingering to make sure that Fiona's got a handle on it. She cups Ian's neck, letting him lay against her shoulder, sniffling a harsh inhale to keep herself together. They're on the road, leaving Ian's boyfriend angry and confused that he had taken his medication, but that he needs something that no one but one person can provide him with.

"Mickey." Ian's cries are softer now, defeated. He can't find any ounce of strength. He sticks to what he knows. Fiona's scent. That scent he remembers holding him when he busted a knee up, or chased monsters from under the bunk bed with the staircase ball bat - then sat beside him on his bed, forgetting her date or her friends to read him his favorite comic book, hugging him to her until he fell back asleep.

"How long till?" Fiona asks Lip as they take the turn pike out to the interstate ramp.

"Few hours. Called Svetlana and she said the place was upstate. Should be there by eight."

Ian shakes against his sister, and she prays, actually prays that they can make it there. He needs Mickey.

**~*~**

The skies look gold, soaked pink clouds adding an extra layer that brings out the morning. Lip's got his window down, the stale summer air filtering in throughout the car with his cigarette smoke. He offers it back to Fiona, the two oldest Gallagher kids sharing the Marlboro down to the filter. Ian had gone cone silent. The hours it had taken to drive across Illinois to the prison were too many too long. The dash reads **7:45 AM** in ugly green letters. They don't fuss about having the radio on. Each Gallagher left to their thoughts, their gnawing worry. Debbie, Vee, Kev, Svetlana, all calling every hour on the hour, asking to speak to Ian. He's still. Makes no attempts to even reject the phone calls. Takes a fit at the mention of Caleb's non stop texts and calls too. His nose exhaling heavily to let them know he's not unconscious, but he's not with them either.

"Fuck! Okay, we're GOOD," Lip is shouting in a sudden belt out.

"Man, you can't do that crap here. We've got people in this tiny pile of shit on four wheels." Carl hisses back, blowing out a hard breath, clearly startled.

"Lip, what?" Fiona tries, a little more gentler than her younger brother.

"The next exit, we'll be there. I'm gonna call ahead. Svetlana said it'd be quicker that way. Get your wallets out. They'll need ID's."

**~*~**

Lip's tossing the last cigarette in his pack as they approach the barbed wire and heavy iron gates painted in a chalky tan. It settles across the Gallagher clan as they await to be buzzed in, they could've ended up here, many of times. Fiona clucks her tongue to the roof of her mouth to keep herself in you-can-do-this mode. Her ankle is itchy from memories of that house arrest monitor. She was here. Maybe not this prison, but in this environment, this place. For recklessness. Mickey, she can't fucking think of why he's here, not really. Carl is starting to prattle on about how bogus this situation is, how Mickey has to be here, but is knocked off mid-sentence.

"Mickey's here. He's in there." Ian is lapping at the air to get in breath, his chest pumping overtime to accommodate his rapid heartbeat. He leaves Fiona's space, sitting up.

"That's right, buddy. We're gonna go in there and see him, okay?" Lip's tone is set firm.

"I did this to him," Ian whispers, eyes wide as if he's actually just realizing they're here at a prison, as if he's seeing what's real break apart right in front of his face for the very first time.

Fiona can do nothing but gape at the air like a fish out of water, and try to reassure Ian. She hasn't been to visit Mickey. No one but Yevgeny's mom has. Her mind filters to him asking her if she needed help with things from the attic, to him attending to her brother in a more gentle manner than she'd ever known to exist. Lip and Carl are quiet too. Lip's muttered _fuck_ circling the car with silent incursion. Prison, an actual fucking hell hole that the man who'd taken care of their brother was dumped in over their half sister.

"Jesus, this is bullshit." Fiona is the first one to say it outloud, brushing Ian's hair back to keep him calm.

There's a surprisingly haunting pain blanketing over the Gallagher's in the car.

"We really do hurt every-fucking-body, don't we?" Carl's solemn in asking, making a statement, picking absentmindedly at the fabric of his jeans.

_Mandy...._ Fiona swears by Lip's voice, barely letting the name of Mickey's sister dump from his lips. Carl is regarding his older brother thoughtfully, whom drives on through the gates as instructed, trying not to let anyone see.

_Bury and hide it. Be an asshole. The Gallagher commandments._ Fiona bows her head in shame, the chestnut curtain covering her shoulders.

**~*~**

"Make it quick. None of you are on the list and the kid is an added addition to the standard visitor limitations." The beefy guard reminds them for the thousandth fucking time.

They stay quiet, Fiona and Lip on either side of Ian to barricade his lanky form in their own protective way. Not a lot of people are here for the first morning wave of visitation. Getting in wasn't that hard. Ian couldn't say anything but Mickey, prompting the delay to get back here. But here they are, passing windows where several tattooed men set behind the thick glass barriers. A few women littered the stools,  one or two holding small hands of the kids to the windows, the guys, their fathers behind the block, doe eyed, frosted over. It's surreal. Fiona wants to plug her nose at the overwhelming sterile stench, her boots still somehow sticking to the floor that looks about as clean as Frank on labor day.

Lumps rain across her throat, tightening her into submitting to the ongoing quiet. She gives Ian's forearm a gentle stir upon approaching the window where Mickey will be led to them. Ian stares at the stool, tilting his head. He doesn't move. Statue posed over. Lip tries to help him sit down, but it's no use. Ian glares at the phone that hangs loosely on the outside, his hands tightening into fists until they are quenching the knuckle white shade. The buzzing noise alerts the siblings to Mickey's presence. He's stocky, hair a little grown out, his brows immediately stocked into his hairline. He thumbs his lip when Fiona, Carl, and Lip come into view, turning his back as if to sarastically laugh. Fiona has to control herself and remember that there's two goddamn sides to every story, and Mickey was on the receiving end of a Gallagher.

Mickey's hostility doesn't last long, his eyes locking target to Ian's shape. The blue looks wounded, aghast. Mickey isn't staying put any longer, his fingers wrapping around that phone so fast it makes Fiona's head spin in circles.

"Ian, sit down, pick up the phone, pal." Lip grazes his brother's neck with tender strokes.

Mickey's eyes are everywhere he can dart them in direction. He's panicking, that much is clear. His mouth opens, jaw locks, tongue slicks his teeth. He's mouthing Ian's name behind that glass over and over to get him to grab the other phone.

"Ian, baby boy, it's Mickey. Can you sit down? Talk to him?" Fiona's not in control of her voice crumbling apart. She's spilling distress.

"Need him. Mickey." Ian's hand spear's the air, slotting over the glass. His green eyes run out of room to fight away the overflowing tears that drench his cheeks. "Mickey."

He's so small, even if he's the biggest one here. Carl is the one to snatch the phone, stuffing it to Ian's ear where Lip has to hold it.

"Ian? Come on, man. What's goin' on? Lip, what the fuck?" Mickey's anxiety is weaving through like a virus, everyone collapsing into the downfall it brings.

Ian turns his nose to the phone, starting to rock back and forth on his chucks.

Lip's talking so slow that Fiona is sure he's gonna loose his shit over this entire thing. "His, uh... C-. This dude..."

Fiona digs her toe into the floor. Mickey's eyes flicker away briefly, something she can't place, beyond grief shore his features. He doesn't smart off, make a crack about the new guy in Ian's life, he keeps his eyes trained on him, glancing towards Lip here and there, listening to him dish out the rest.

"Basically, he keeps saying he wants you. He was shaking, freaking the fuck out. He took all his pills too, so we didn't know what else to do, Mickey."

Mickey does that thumb thing again, his Adam's apple bobbing with a constricting swallow he makes. He ditches the phone, rising from his seat. He's gone, causing Ian to gasp. Fiona has to catch him. Like an invisible punch throttled his ribcage apart. Lip is shell-shocked, teeth clenching.

"Did he fuckin' just.....?"

"Lip, don't pull anything here, not right now," Fiona warns, squinting in confusion as she sees Mickey return with another guard, pointing to Ian, nods being passed between the two. Mickey approaches the telephone, Ian perking.

Fiona answers this time, Mickey cutting her off.

"Take him to that guy, right over there to the left," He orders, his tone painstainkingly gentle.

Everyone looks to their left where a guard is waving them on.

"He'll bring Ian to me."

"By himself?"

"Fiona, please," Ian vocalizes, weakened.

They're all gob-smacked at his sudden recovery from catatonia. Mickey sighs, literally sighs in vibrations through his end, a notion that signals relief. Their shoulders are a little lighter.

**~*~**

The man doesn't touch him, leaves him in that brick slated room with a silver table and chairs in the middle. Ian is aware. Interrogation room. He remembers seeing them several times over the years growing up, in life, in movies. It's what he's familiar with. He's slowly trickling into a ball of nerves, knees bouncing, thumbnails digging into each opposing thumb pad. _Mickey_. His eyes were so beautiful, they were everything Ian remembered, yet so much more bright. How could he have gone so long without seeing them? His stomach is frenzied, screaming at him. _What's going to happen now_? Past memories vision him in a thick cloth, making him pinch at his temples to try and will the thoughts gone.

Mickey stepping back, slamming the door, barring him to a cold and dirty floor that he doesn't know, that hurts. It'll make him filthy, covered in nothingness, no Mickey. A life unlived right. Going through without really seeing. People can get through without someone, Ian figures. He has. Mickey has. Everyone he's ever known has managed to fumble on whatever fucking crossroads, onto the next without a constant person in their life. But Ian's shaking, every branch inside him coming apart, peddling his veins around them, swiveling in swirls up through his lungs, pushing that name with it. It topples onto his tongue, leaving no room for breath. _Mickey. Only Mickey_. He can't lie to himself anymore. He can't play pretend with a hand that isn't signature lettered up with a posing threat to fuck someone up. He doesn't have any inclination to what'll happen, he just has to get this out to Mickey.

The door is opened and closed, words being regurgitated from Mickey to the man in blue. Ian muzzles himself, unthreading, falling apart when he takes Mickey in. His eyes thicken with a violent burn, stripped tears. He's moving, or is he shaking? _No_ , his feet work.

_Crackled footing. Heavy boots on the cemement. Running. Running._

_No more running. Staying. Right here._ Right here where his heart has always been.

He shouldn't, has no right, but he does. His body works to his will this time, outstretching his arm until his fingers are hovering over the inked words that lay beneath Mickey's two layered collars. Branded to his lover's heart. Mickey's shrill grip is steel on Ian's wrist, warning him lowly.

"Don't."

_Just._ And then Ian went, the disease his leading captive, throwing him in the trunk without air. He abandoned Mickey. Months away, months inside nameless faces. He can't stop himself from saying what feels is right.

"Don't what?" Ian toy's with Mickey's tank beneath the jumpsuit. He won't invade Mickey that way. Open him back up.

Mickey's blue eyes are bathed in strife. All blue eyes and a bruised heart. "Fuck."

"Mickey." Ian spins in and out, here, there, everywhere. It all leads him back to Mickey.

"Stop. You don't get to just.... You were...."

"Your head is spinning too, isn't it, Mick? Like mine is right now. You fucking hate me, I know. I fucking hate me. Running."

"Running? Ian, you gotta make sense. You're not makin' any right now." Mickey searches for something, any answer. His anger has evaporated, slicing him back open like rotten grapefruit, leaving his guts to fucking pour out, letting everyone see all of him, how he bleeds the same, every scar written flesh-to-bone deep.

"I ran from you. I took from you. I tried to play it off, make up this new life to replace everything that happened when things went to shit. But you, you were.... My baby." Ian is feathers to a razor. Light, but cutting right through Mickey. His eyes do this private VIP show reserved for Mickey.

"You were my baby, and I let you go. All of everything wasn't anything like it became when I met you. Things meant so much. I was fucking crazy before the state told me so. For you, Mickey. Oh, Mickey. I love you, so much. I can't ever make it stop. You're.... here." Ian jams his fingers against his own chest, where his heart is, over and over, hyperventilation starting to court him.

Mickey, swept in, thoroughly tossed about, eyes clouded with tears, teeth biting an unsteady lip - hardens incredulously, his hand cupping Ian by the nape of his neck, dragging him to his body, stealing his brash oxygen by covering Ian's mouth, kissing him so hard he raises the taller man in a tip toed arch slightly off the floor. Headlong in instinct, Ian slips his hands everywhere he can get them. Mickey's back, to his shoulders, to his ass, hips, cupping his cheeks, removing the tears from Mickey's cheeks. He tugs at the black hair he's missed so much, the texture still there. Mickey bumps Ian's hips, letting him know it's okay to pull it. They're doing it, slowly bringing each other back to life - something no one can understand. No more running. Crackled footing is plated, settled.

Ian is no longer struggling to breathe, but huffing in grunts, parting his lips to let Mickey's tongue lick, meet his. It's slow, switching to urgent, slow motion breaks in between. Ian works Mickey's tank down, his hand falling to the letters where his name remained unchanged, but added a few letters. Mickey never wrote over it. He fixed it. He kept it, nurtured it. They break, nosing each other, lips connected by a sloppy string of saliva that neither care about to wipe away.

"Mickey," Ian says it, like it's all he's capable of speaking within the English language.

"Ian," Mickey responds, swaying, not letting his eyes open for fear this'll be another hellish nightmare.

"We're real. I had to touch you. I didn't want to run anymore." Ian's looking at Mickey, still keeping his hands over Mickey's thumping heart.

"We got a long way to go." Mickey throws out immediately.

"And I wanna go with you. I won't change my mind, nobody can make me change my mind." Ian is matter of fact. Mickey, still unsure, guarded, rocked around, spits out _**what about your boyfriend**_?

"Not my baby." Ian bends, his lips kissing gently at the skin where the ink has healed across Mickey's chest. He's stunned, holding himself in an anchor by a knuckle deep grip of red hair.

"Don't take it all back, please?" Ian is mumbling wildly in through his suckling kisses.

"Long as you don't fuckin' do it either. I can't go through that shit again, Ian." Mickey is almost jabbering the words in whispers.

Mickey does assure after Ian, that he'll never, even if he wanted to many fucking times. And he did, but then, then he didn't. He couldn't ever trade his tryst with Ian Gallagher. The fuckhead may have tore him apart in more ways than humanly possible, but he also gave and instilled things in Mickey that Mickey needed to become whole. He's puffing softly, keeping Ian flush to him. "Never."

All still watered is sucked down with the banging open of a door.

"Time's up, boys. Gave you long enough. Not gettin' fired, Milkovich. Let's go."

Ian leaves the launch pad in three seconds flat, shaking his head, snarling with disbelief. Mickey tries to reach out, and that's when Ian drops to his knees, arms slinging around Mickey's waist.

"No, need him! Mickey, please!"

"Gallagher, s' okay. C'mon, Ian. Get up. I've got you." Mickey's fading, static electrocuting his ears. Ian is hurting, Ian is being taken away. Ian is not okay and he can't do anything about it. Ian might change his mind. He fights all that's ever fibered together his entire being, to coax Ian off the floor. He hugs him close, trying to shove off the shaking by slow back rubs and stroking fingertips.

"Shh, shh. You're gonna come back and see me, yeah? I promise, not goin' anywhere. How can I, right?" His humor falls on deaf ears. The guard, oblivious, grabs Ian and literally drags him screaming from the room. Asking what the fuck Ian is on to make him go psychotic.

Mickey follows close behind, trying to wedge himself between the guard and Ian, defensive over what's _his_. "Aye, don't fuckin' grab him, man. Let go! He won't hurt anybody. You can't put your hands on him like that."

The Gallagher's intercept when their brother is near contained. Barking out obscentities. The guard simply informs Mickey that this is a no go, locking a firm hand under Mickey's elbow to drag him back behind the barriers and away from Ian. Mickey resists the teeth grinding urge to bury his fist in the fuck's jaw. He's buzzing with this numbness, being ejected from checking on Ian, trying to plant his feet into the floor to see Ian through the glass. All he gets is one flash of red hair.

**~*~**

"Fuck, he gonna be okay?" Carl speaks first, the drive through handing them their order, Lip parking them under a shade tree in the fast food lot, cutting the engine.

Fiona pats the slumbering Ian, shaking her head.

"Fuck," Lip butts in.

"Fuck," Fiona echoes.

"He really loves him, doesn't he?" Carl asks, already having the answer.

"He's had something none of us have ever had with anyone. Thinks because he got the shit end of the stick with Monica that he'll fuck it up. How do you get past that?" Fiona snorts without humor, cursing everything that pained their lives and continues to inflict torture on her cried out brother, asleep at her side. She's empty with a helpless dulling null.

"I want something like that, one day. Someone to look at me like that, like I hang the fucking stars in the sky, every night. Didn't think it was possible for someone to look at another person that way." Carl sighs his way through the statement, picking at his fries with distaste.

"Milkovich's have ways of getting in and locking your head into a mindfuck," Lip is saying, pausing to blow out a drag of smoke, melancholy wiring him tightly. "they just fuckin' love you. I don't know how else to explain it."

Fiona and Carl don't press, Lip's revelation a rare one. He closes off just as quick, his brows knitting together. No sounds come from anyone, except the occasional food wrapper. It's seeing Ian literally writhe and cry out for Mickey in his sleep moments later that Fiona shares this look with her brothers in the front seat. They nod, all together.

"I'll call Kev, Vee and Svetlana. Clear the squirrel fund and anything you have. State appointed lawyers aren't shit and we know it."

"Got a few checks saved from the diner. I'll add em' in. I think Debbie does too." Carl is already typing something into his phone.

"I'll call Mandy, see if she can help." Lip is cautiously kept at the name.

"You sure? Lip...." Fiona pegs her brother.

Lip focusses on Ian, asleep on the seat, flagged with flashbacks of Mandy's declaration of love and his foolish silence in response to her. "Yeah, yeah, it's the time the Gallagher way fuckin' changes."


End file.
